Abrigo de la fuente del Sapo and Central E. de Santonje
Plan this ride
Recorded distance
325 km
Riding-time estimate
8 h 59
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
325 km from Nerpio to Nerpio, about 8 h 59 of riding. On the way it passes Abrigo del Engarbo, Letreros de los mártires, Central E. de Santonje and back through Letreros de los mártires. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,450 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Abrigo de la fuente del Sapo
Nerpio sits high in the Sierra del Segura, in the southwest of Albacete, about eleven hundred metres up, and it feels like an outpost of the Andalusian mountains that happens to be in Castile-La Mancha. The village is small, with roughly sixteen hundred people, and the countryside around is a deep, rumpled landscape of pine forest, rock outcrops and tiny cultivated valleys. More than forty rock shelters with paintings have been found in the area, making Nerpio one of the richest places for prehistoric art in Spain, with paintings in red showing animals, hunters and abstract signs.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Abrigo de la fuente del Sapo is where the day begins. Next is Abrigo del Engarbo.
2. Abrigo del Engarbo
Deep in the Sierra de Segura in the northeast of Jaén province, close to where the Segura river is born, the Engarbo rock shelters hide a few small painted figures under limestone overhangs. They belong to the great serial UNESCO listing of Levantine rock art, prehistoric paintings found along the mountains of eastern Spain, with stylised humans and animals in red ochre that have survived thousands of years of sun, frost and goats. The shelters are modest and fragile, often fenced, and visits usually need to be arranged locally, so treat them as a reason to explore this remote corner rather than a guaranteed sight.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Abrigo del Engarbo comes up about 58 km into the recorded legs. Next is Letreros de los mártires.
3. Letreros de los mártires
Out in the high north-east of Granada province, Huéscar feels a long way from the Alhambra and the beaches of the Costa Tropical. This is the altiplano, a broad upland of wheat fields, almond trees and pale badlands at around a thousand metres, ringed by mountains, with the great limestone hump of La Sagra rising to the north. The rock shelter called Letreros de los Mártires lies in this country, a dozen or so kilometres from the town.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 106 km into the recorded legs you reach Letreros de los mártires. Next is Central E. de Santonje, 31 km on.
4. Central E. de Santonje
The Indalo, a little stick figure holding an arc over its head, is now the symbol of the whole province of Almería, painted on houses, cars and souvenirs, and it comes from a rock shelter here in the hills around Vélez-Blanco. The Cueva de los Letreros, a few kilometres from this point, holds the original among other paintings of the Levantine and schematic styles, and the shelters of the Sierra de María are part of the World Heritage Site of Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula, inscribed in 1998. Santonje, as the area is called, is one of a cluster of sites in these mountains.